


Eccentric Isolated Instances

by J (j_writes)



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M, mindmeld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-27
Updated: 2010-10-27
Packaged: 2017-10-12 22:20:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_writes/pseuds/J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You need someone to take care of you, young man," she said, and eyed Bob. "Is that you?" she asked. "Is that what you do?" - Bob, Mikey, and accidental brainsharing</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eccentric Isolated Instances

**Author's Note:**

> for MWestBelle for the Waysplusone challenge. thanks to Mrsronweasley and Etben for providing useful poking.

"Leave it to you, Mikeyway, to end up in the hospital on the last night of your first European tour." Bob slumped back against the wall and willed the lights to stop spinning just a little.

Beside him, he could feel Mikey crossing his arms. "I wouldn't be here at _all_ if you hadn't dragged me," he mumbled mutinously. "And anyway, I'm not _in_ the hospital. Just getting stitches." He shifted, and Bob's eyes snapped open just in time to catch him tugging at the bandage on his hand, trying to peek. He reached out and grabbed Mikey's wrist, frowning.

"Leave it," he said. "You're just gonna make it bleed more."

Mikey pulled his hand away and crossed his arms again. "It could've waited until we got home," he said.

"Maybe," Bob agreed. "But Brian told me to take you to get it fixed. So I'm taking you to get it fixed. Nobody wants a broken bassist."

"Someday, Bryar," Mikey said, "I'm going to have Brian tell you to jump off a bridge, just to see what you do."

"As long as it's a small one," Bob replied agreeably.

Mikey lapsed into silence for a few minutes, crossing and uncrossing his legs, slumping down a little further in his chair. Finally, he tilted his head to the side to look at Bob. "You don't have to stay, you know. I can get back to the hotel on my own."

"I know."

"Nothing _happened_. It was an _accident_."

Bob eyed him. "I believe you. But less because you're telling me than because I got to hear about you tripping over your own two feet about six times before we left. And about how _epic_ it was," he added, imitating Frank's awed voice. "And also view the dramatic reenactment."

Mikey sighed and dropped his head into his hands, then winced. "Lucky I missed that, I guess."

"Both times?" Bob smirked. "Oh, I'm sure we'll get it again once we get back."

"Probably." Mikey's voice was muffled. He lifted his head and glanced at Bob, then away again. "I just mean, I'm sorry, you know. We've got a hotel. And you're here. Babysitting."

"I'm not babysitting, I'm doing my job."

"You don't have to take care of me, you know." Mikey shrugged. "Just because you're sleeping with my brother, I mean."

There was a piercing screech as Bob's chair scraped against the floor with how fast he sat up. "Because _what_?" he demanded.

Mikey darted his eyes at him, then shrugged. "You're not subtle," he said.

"I'm not sleeping with Gerard," Bob said, but it sounded weak and hollow even to himself.

"Well, no," Mikey agreed. "I guess there wouldn't be much sleeping. Living in the van most nights, and all." He looked up as his name was called. "Hey, nice," he said, and stood. Bob stood with him, automatically. Mikey waved his good hand at him. "They're not going to let you in anyway," he said.

Bob shrugged, sat back down in his chair, and closed his eyes. He didn't remember sleeping, but seconds later, he felt someone kicking his chair, and there was Mikey standing over him, looking tired and rumpled, but with his hand freshly bandaged. "Ready to go?" he asked.

The nurse who had called him in looked speculatively between the two of them, then patted Mikey on the back. "You need someone to take care of you, young man," she said, and eyed Bob. "Is that you?" she asked. "Is that what you do?"

Bob meant to say no, he did, but when he looked up at Mikey, he looked so exhausted and blank that he sighed and stood, pressing a hand to Mikey's back and turning him towards the door. "Sure looks that way, doesn't it?" he asked, giving her what he hoped was a charming smile.

"Here," she said, handing Bob a pill case. "Make sure he takes these." Bob eyed them, then nodded. "All of them," she stressed.

"He will," Bob told her, and poked Mikey in the back for good measure.

In the cab back to the hotel, Mikey slept on Bob's lap, and Bob ended up paying the driver just a little too much to drive around the block a few more times, because it seemed like kind of a shame to wake the poor guy up just yet.  
______________

They were an hour and a half into their flight home when Mikey mumbled, "Sorry."

Bob looked up from his book, startled. He'd thought Mikey had been asleep since they took off. "You're awake," he noted.

Mikey yawned. "Mostly," he agreed. He shifted in his seat, stretching his legs out and sitting up a little. "I'm sorry," he repeated. "For, you know…" he waved a hand at Bob in a way that could mean anything at all. "It's none of my business."

"Oh." Bob looked back down at his book. "No," he agreed. "It's not."

Mikey leaned over to rifle through his bag, and pulled out the bottle of pills the nurse had given him. "Just, you know," he said with an utterly straight face, "hurt him, and I'll have Schechter tell you to jump off one _hell_ of a bridge."

"Noted," Bob agreed. He watched Mikey shake out a pill onto his palm. "Those doing any good?"

"Haven't tried them yet," Mikey said. "Ask me in an hour." He popped it into his mouth, and settled his headphones back over his ears.

Bob went back to his book, but found his eyes drifting closed after a while, so he tipped his head back against the seat, and listened to the sound of the Smiths coming from Mikey's headphones, barely loud enough to hear. He thought about summer afternoons, teenage Mikey sprawled out on Gerard's bed, bent over a comic book while Gerard drew, both of them sweating in the oppressive heat, rolling over occasionally so the breeze from the fan in the corner would hit a different part of their bodies. He tapped his foot to the rhythm of the music and didn't catch himself mouthing along until Mikey pushed the headphones from his ears and said, "I didn't realize you knew this song."

Bob thought about it for a moment. "I don't," he said thoughtfully, and didn't realize until he was half-asleep that the music had gotten louder instead of quieter when Mikey put his headphones back on.

By the time he woke up, he'd forgotten again.  
______________

"It's just a few shows," Brian had told him in the airport on their way home from Europe, and Bob had shrugged, said, "Sure, why not?" because he didn't have anything better to do.

So he stayed in Jersey, on Toro's couch, doing sound for a set of local shows that one of Brian's other bands was doing, and every so often he'd come out at the end of the night to find Gerard bent over a beer at the bar, not quite holding up his end of a conversation with the bartender. He'd wait for Bob to get paid, to pack up his things, and he'd talk about the comics he was reading, the ideas he was having for the band. Bob would listen, nod thoughtfully, throw out an idea or two, and they'd end up in the alley on the way back to his car, Gerard pressed up against the bricks, his hands grabbing at the back of Bob's shirt. When Bob pulled back, Gerard's face would be raw with stubble burn, and sometimes he'd drop to his knees right there and blow him against the wall, just to hear the way he tried to hold in the sounds he made.

Most of the time, though, they'd end up back at Gerard's, tangled up in his sheets, fucking slow and intense against the creaky mattress, without any of the urgent desperation they'd had on the road. Gerard was still all grasping hands and fierce kisses, and Bob would fall asleep afterwards with the heavy weight of him draped across his side.

He'd wake in the morning and roll over to the sight of Gerard passed out next to him, or hunched grumpily over a mug of coffee, and before he let himself gather his thoughts, he'd feel this intense complicated wave of emotion wash over him. He tried not to think too hard about what that might mean.

It was a few weeks after they landed that he padded upstairs to the bathroom and found Mikey sitting in the hallway, legs stretched out to the other wall, comic propped on his knees. Bob looked at him there, sitting in the half darkness with his glasses askew and his hair sticking up in sixteen different directions, and he felt something loosen inside of him that he hadn't even noticed tightening up since they'd left Europe. He settled down by Mikey's side, and Mikey barely glanced up.

"Bob," he said by way of greeting.

"How're you doing, Mikeyway?" Bob asked.

Mikey looked at him, and Bob felt a surge of emotion, all of them tangled together at once, before Mikey shrugged, and they all dissolved messily. "Fine," Mikey said, mostly unconvincingly.

"Yeah," Bob looked at the dark hallway, the comic, and his watch. "Looks it."

Mikey lifted a shoulder. "Been having dreams," he said, then looked pointedly at Bob. "How about you?"

"Dreams?" Bob asked. He thought about all the times he'd woken up from the middle of something about Mikey and Gerard as kids, riding bikes around the neighborhood, acting out Star Wars in the basement, and he laughed quietly. "No," he said, "I think I've just been spending too much time in your cellar."

Mikey looked at him steadily for a minute before saying, "I just meant how are you doing."

"Oh." Bob blinked. "I'm good," he said.

"Yeah," Mikey said. Someone who knew him a little less wouldn't notice the slight grimace. Bob noticed.

"Do you want me to go?" he asked.

Mikey's head snapped up, and Bob felt hopelessly conflicted for a moment or two before Mikey sighed and said "No," a little too quickly.

Bob sat there for a moment, watching him, and then nodded to the stack of comics on the other side of them. "Pass one of those over here," he said.

Mikey squinted at him. "You're not going back to bed?" he asked.

"Not right now." Bob opened the comic on his lap and settled in beside Mikey against the wall. "Not sleeping too well myself," he lied.

He woke in the morning to a foot poking him in the side, and peered up into the too-bright hallway lights to see Gerard standing over them, smiling fondly down at Mikey, who was curled up passed out with his head in Bob's lap.  
______________

He boarded a plane back to Chicago on a Tuesday, and by the time he landed, he felt like he had the worst hangover of his life. It took almost more effort than he had in his body to stay upright long enough to claim his bag, and he folded himself into a cab as his stomach gave an awful lurch. He dragged himself up to his apartment and fell over onto the couch, and didn't wake up until Frank called at noon the next day to make sure he was alive.

"I feel like I tried to outdrink The Used," he mumbled into the phone, and Frank made a sympathetic noise.

"Seriously, I don't know what you and the Ways got up to before you left, but I'm kind of pissed I wasn't invited," Frank said.

"We didn't…" Bob started to protest, and then didn't bother. When he hung up with Frank, he texted Mikey. Gerard had been sending him photos of the pictures he was drawing since Bob had gotten on the plane, so he figured that was a good sign for his health. Mikey, on the other hand, texted back, _jfc, dying,_ and Bob nodded at the phone like it could understand him. Then he winced, and held his head.

He stayed in bed, and the hangover lasted. He drank water and juice, he took medicine, ate toast and soup, and nothing helped. He dragged himself out of bed to the doctor, and they found nothing wrong. On the third day, Gerard called him, and spent an hour talking about how worried he was about Mikey. Bob could only hold the phone to his ear and make vague replies when Gerard paused for breath. Sentences were far too much work.

On the fifth day, he started to feel like maybe he could learn to stand up again without the world taking swirling nosedives around him, and when Gerard called him in the afternoon, he answered the phone with, "how's Mikey?" instead of a greeting.

"He had…a thought," Gerard said slowly, and there was a knock at Bob's door.

"Hang on, I've got to – " Bob said distractedly into the phone, and he found that each step he took into his hallway, he felt a little stronger, a little more able to throw the deadbolt, turn the handle, and pull the door open.

Mikey was standing there, looking pale and drawn, but he let out this breath of helpless relief when he saw Bob, and Bob felt the world right itself again, felt the headache draining away, his eyes opening completely for the first time in days. He leaned against the doorway, overwhelmed by the rush of suddenly feeling healthy again, and he and Mikey just stared at each other until Gerard gave Mikey a little push from behind. Mikey stumbled forward, hesitating for only a moment before tipping his head against Bob's shoulder, leaning his body against him, Bob's arms coming up around him to pull him into a tight hug without even thinking about it.

"Jesus, Mikey," he said. "You've felt like this all week too." It wasn't a question, but Mikey nodded against his shoulder.

"Fuck," he said weakly. "Fuck, _Bob_ , what the _hell_." He stood up again and looked at Bob, his eyes clearer, blinking in the light of the hallway. "Man," he said, looking over his shoulder at Gerard. "I don't think I've eaten in _days_. Can we order _all_ of the food?"

"All of the food," Bob said, "coming right up." He stepped back into the apartment, careful to pull Mikey along with him, waiting for Gerard to trail them both back into the living room.

"Your flight left around three on Tuesday, didn't it?" Mikey asked as Bob made a list of things to order.

Bob nodded. "Started then?" he asked.

"3:07," Gerard confirmed. "He came crashing into my room and fell on the end of my bed, and has been sick ever since." He hovered over Mikey's shoulder. "You're sure you're feeling better, right?"

Mikey looked up at him pointedly. " _Look_ at me, Gee," he said. He turned to Bob. "You lied, didn't you? About the dreams. You've been having dreams."

"Yeah, but not…" Bob frowned. "It seemed like yours were upsetting. Mine were just…they were kind of nice." Mikey and Gerard both looked at him, waiting, and he shrugged, waving a hand at them both.   
"They were about you guys," he said. "When you were little. Acting things out. Hanging out and making up comics. Stuff like that. It was…" he made a face. "Cute."

"Oh." Mikey's cheeks turned pink. "That's not what I was dreaming about."

"I figured," Bob said, and flinched. "I'm sorry, if it was…I don't know, there's probably some messed up stuff…" he trailed off and tapped his head lightly, not really knowing how to put voice to anything going on. He felt briefly amused, and for the first time recognized the way that it coincided with the twitch of Mikey's lips. "Oh," he said, and let his eyes drift over to Gerard, feeling that swell of emotion again, deeper than anything he had any right to be feeling. "Okay, this is _fucked up_."

"You're telling me," Mikey said, making a face. When Bob looked at him, he lifted a shoulder and said, "I was dreaming about you." He flicked a hand between Bob and Gerard, and his cheeks got redder. "You guys."

Gerard's eyes got bigger than Bob had ever thought possible. "Oh. Oh, that's." He looked at Mikey, who wasn't looking back. " _Mikey_."

"I didn't _mean_ to," Mikey said, offended.

"Of course you didn't," Bob agreed. The embarrassment he felt got stronger as he scooted towards Mikey on the couch, but he also felt that the whole situation got a little more bearable when he could feel Mikey pressed up against him, his body relaxing a little.

Mikey sighed and let his head tip against Bob's shoulder. "What are we going to do?" he asked, finally looking at Gerard, and Bob felt his helplessness.

Gerard picked up Bob's list. "We're going to order food," he said, like it was the simplest thing in the universe. "We're going to order food, and then we're taking Bob back to Jersey with us."

Bob looked at him. "And then what?" he asked.

"Then?" Gerard shrugged. "Then, we'll see what happens."  
______________

They stayed in the basement together, because Mikey's room was too cluttered for him and Bob to stay there, and neither one of them was very comfortable leaving each other's side for the whole night. They watched movies, they read, they drank, they talked about music and the business and their bandmates, and Gerard and Bob kept their hands off each other. Mostly.

Bob could feel Gerard's eyes on him sometimes, and every once in a while he'd daze off watching Gerard's fingers grip around a pen as he drew, sketching worlds that he created from his mind. "Pretty amazing, isn't he?" Mikey asked at one point, leaning his chin against Bob's shoulder, peering over it at what Gerard was drawing.

"He is, yeah," Bob agreed, and felt a surge of pride and admiration as he leaned back against Mikey a little.

Frank was the first one to figure things out, which was less him relying on his powers of deduction, and more the fact that Mikey had never been any good at keeping anything from him. He sat on Gerard's bed, chin propped on his hands, looking from Bob to Mikey with stars in his eyes, and asked eight million questions, while Gerard ignored them all in favor of his sketchpad, curled up against the pillows.

"Can you see me, Mikey?" he asked, peering at Bob intently like he was trying to crawl into his mind.

"Of course I see you. It's not like that," Mikey said. "I'm not reading his thoughts or anything, not really. It's just…I feel what he feels sometimes. And we have each other's dreams."

"And you can't leave each other."

"Apparently, yeah," Bob agreed.

"How do you _pee_?"

"Well," Mikey said dryly, "first I unzip my fly…"

Frank snickered appreciatively. "And then what, Mikeyway?" he asked teasingly. He turned to Gerard. "You should write a comic about this," he said. "It'd be _great_."

"It would be the most boring comic ever," Gerard replied. "A couple of guys staring at each other a lot. Fascinating."

"Have you tried blocking each other out?" Frank asked.

Mikey shrugged. "I really don't need to, except for the dreams," he said. "Which I can't do anyway. Bob doesn't really think too loud."

"Neither does he," Bob agreed. He grinned at Frank. "It's a damn good thing you and Gerard didn't have this happen instead. Your heads would probably explode."

Frank crawled up the bed and plastered himself to Gerard's side. "I'm in your head, GeeWay," he said. "I see what you're thiiiiinking."

"Ugh, get _off_ ," Gerard said, pushing him away, but he was laughing, and didn't seem to mind at all when Frank curled up there with his head pillowed against Gerard's shoulder.

Frank's phone rang, and he answered without moving an inch off of Gerard. "It's Toro," he told them, "he's bored. Come over," he said into the phone, "everyone's over here but Otter. We should play stuff." He paused, listening. "Yeah," he said, "I know he's out of town. Bob drums, though, don't you, Bob?"

Bob opened his mouth to reply, and felt such a complicated wash of emotions from Mikey that he stopped. "Not really," he hedged.

"Whatever, we've got his old kit here, you can bang on something and keep time for us," Frank said confidently, and finished up his call to Ray from the headlock that Gerard put him in.

Bob considered finding some urgent errand to do, but when he went upstairs to get a drink from the kitchen, he felt a twinge of headache from being away from Mikey, so he went back downstairs and waited for Ray with the rest of them. By the time he found himself behind the dusty old kit with a pair of sticks in his hands, he had mostly been able to push Mikey's feelings down to a manageable level, and he concentrated on what Gerard was saying about the song they were going to play. He started out a little hesitant, but as he closed his eyes and lost himself in the music, he began to relax, and felt Mikey calming down with him.

At least, what's what he assumed, until he opened his eyes and found Mikey standing in front of him, staring at him, his bass hanging forgotten from its strap.

"You okay, Mikeyway?" he asked when the song ended, and Mikey kept staring at him, mouth open a little, until he blinked and cleared his throat.

"You…really like the drums," he said a little breathlessly.

"I…" Bob blinked. "I guess I do, yeah," he hedged.

"I mean, you don't…" Mikey waved at him. "You don't feel like that about _anything_. That was…" he shook himself a little, then wrapped his fingers back around the neck of his bass. "Sorry," he said. "That was just…" he shrugged, then looked at Gerard. "What's next?" he asked.

Ray looked faintly confused as they launched into their next song, but Frank was watching Mikey intently, and Bob could feel him feeling faintly embarrassed. He concentrated on playing, on the rhythm of his sticks against the kit, and he played through each song that Gerard called out, halting in places, but picking things up quickly, playing well with them, feeling more confident and more at home behind the kit with each song. Afterwards, when Frank and Gerard were huddled around Ray's guitar with him, arguing over the chords for some chorus that they were probably never going to use, Mikey disappeared up the stairs, and Bob set to work packing the kit up.

He was just tucking the sticks away when he got turned on so intensely and so abruptly that they clattered to the floor. "Fuck," he breathed out, grabbing onto the stool to hold himself up, and Gerard looked up, alarmed, from across the room.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," Bob choked out, and discovered that it was more or less true, the feeling fading as quickly as it had come, but he stayed turned away from the others, feeling the heat on his face, knowing exactly what Mikey had rushed off to do. When Mikey returned to the basement, his face was faintly pink, and Bob was relieved when the others headed upstairs to order pizza, because it gave him a chance to grab Mikey by the arm and say, "fuck, Mikey, what was _that_?"

Mikey looked at him steadily. "If I have to explain it to you…" he said, trailing off.

"No, I mean, why _now_?" Bob asked.

"You just…that was…" Mikey frowned, and Bob felt him struggling for words. "You surprised me, is all," he finally went with. "And I couldn't…I just had to…" he shook his head, Bob feeling every ounce of his frustration. "I haven't, okay? Since all of this, I haven't…and…I don't know," he finally said. "I don't know how _any_ of this works, okay?"

"Me neither, " Bob said. He reached out and touched Mikey's arm, just because it made him feel calmer, made them _both_ feel calmer. "I think we're pretty bad at this," he said.

Mikey nodded, then stepped into Bob's space and just stood there for a moment or two, breathing carefully, Bob's hand still wrapped around his elbow. "Yeah," he agreed, before Frank's voice sounded, calling down the stairs.

"What kind of pizza do you guys want?" he asked.

Bob heard Mikey's stomach rumble, and he laughed. "Every kind," he called back, and kept his hand on Mikey's back as they went upstairs to join the band.  
_____________

It was a few days later when Gerard cornered him while Mikey was in the shower, backing Bob to the door and pushing up against him. Every inch of Bob's body lit up at the touch of Gerard's hands against his skin, tucking up under his shirt, smoothing over his chest, holding him against the wall with enough force that Bob caught his breath.

"Fuck, Bob," Gerard said, his breath close to Bob's lips, and Bob couldn't help but lean in the rest of the way, grab Gerard around the hips, and pull him in.

"I can't," Bob said even as Gerard rocked against him and he felt himself getting hard in his jeans, straining towards him, wanting nothing more than to throw him down on the bed and rub off against him until they were both coming.

Gerard groaned into his mouth. "You can," he said, "I've seen it."

Bob laughed a little, but he pushed Gerard back, holding him off. "I _can't_ ," he said.

Gerard's face clouded a little. "Mikey," he said.

"He's going through enough," Bob said.

"You think that you dreaming about this constantly is helping?" Gerard asked. "You think that it wouldn't maybe get _better_ if you did something about it?"

Bob blinked. "I hadn't thought of that, actually."

"Do you even know?" Gerard continued. "Have you even jerked off since this happened? Do you have any idea if he can even tell?"

"He can tell," Bob said.

"How do you know?" Gerard insisted.

Bob looked at him, trying to get the message across without saying anything, but when Gerard just kept looking at him searchingly, he sighed and said, "Because _I_ can tell."

"You…" Gerard trailed off. "Oh," he said, a little blankly. He looked up at the ceiling, towards where the bathroom was. "…is he…?" he said cautiously.

"Jesus, Gerard," Bob said, sighing. "No."

"Well, then, what you have to do," Gerard decided, "is wait until he is."

"I'm sorry, what?"

Gerard grinned. "You heard me," he said. "Maybe, if you're doing it at the same time – "

"That's not – " Bob said, "I can't just – " He felt Mikey getting concerned, and realized that his alarm must be crossing over to him. "I can't talk about this right now," he said. He tried to calm down, and tried not to pay any attention to the way that Gerard's pants were hanging low on his hips, the way he was clearly hard in them, the way he could practically feel what it would be like to push Gerard back and go to his knees, sucking him off hard and fast before Mikey could even make it downstairs.

"Just think about it, okay?" Gerard asked, and leaned in to kiss Bob again, pressing against him for just a little too long.

Bob sighed. "Oh," he said, "I am thinking about it."

Gerard gave him a crooked grin and backed away. "I just bet you are," he said.

"Everything okay?" Mikey asked as Gerard pushed by him and headed for the bathroom when he came back downstairs.

Bob leaned back against the pillows on the bed and smiled as Mikey towel dried his hair and it stuck up in all directions. "Everything's fine," he said.

"Because you felt…" Mikey's brow furrowed. "I'm not sure."

"I'm fine," Bob assured him, and wondered if it was a bad sign that he only felt a kind of comforting calmness as Mikey settled down beside him and stretched out against his side.  
______________

A few nights later, he woke in the darkness of Gerard's room, painfully hard and feeling like he had been teasing himself for hours. "Jesus _fuck_ ," he mumbled into his pillow, and rolled over to make sure Mikey was sleeping through it. Instead, he found an empty air mattress where Mikey should be, and when he closed his eyes and concentrated, he realized that the waves of sensation weren't coinciding with anything he was thinking at all.

"Mikey _fucking_ Way," he sighed, and he lay there in the darkness, squirming uncomfortably against the sheets.

"Nope, wrong brother," Gerard said from above him, and Bob managed to choke out a laugh. In the dimness, he could see Gerard lean up and peek over the edge of the bed, peering down at him worriedly. "You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," Bob forced out, and then a sharp spike of pleasure hit him, and he gasped. "Okay, no. No, I'm – " he broke off and didn't even bother trying to find any more words. He just hauled himself up onto the bed beside Gerard and said, "remember that thing that you said?" He leaned in to kiss him before Gerard could reply.

"Oh," Gerard said, tilting his head towards Mikey's bed, then glancing up towards where his room was, on the first floor. " _Oh_."

"I'm just," Bob said, "I have to – " he ground down against Gerard, feeling him getting hard against him as his body caught up.

" _Yeah_ ," Gerard breathed out, and he was shoving down both of their pants, dragging Bob down against him, rocking up. Bob ground down, their cocks sliding together messy and uncoordinated, but so fucking hot, Gerard's hips tilting in this rhythm that quickly drove all thoughts from Bob's mind except for how badly he needed to be _fucking_ something. He reached down and wrapped a hand around both of them, feeling Gerard's cock sliding hot and smooth against his own, both of them shoving their hips into the grip of his hand, and Gerard's mouth closed around his neck, biting and sucking marks into it.

Gerard came first, shaking and gasping under him, and Bob held off for just a little longer, waiting, he wasn't sure for what, until he felt it – the moment when Mikey broke, a floor up and a few rooms over, a surge of thoughts and sensations and feelings that Bob couldn't make sense of if he had a million years to sort them out, and he didn't even care to, he just let it push him over the edge, rocking down against Gerard and pressing his face to Gerard's shoulder to keep quiet as he came.

He slumped down next to Gerard, tossing an arm over his waist, and lay there with his face buried in the pillow for a few minutes, until Gerard asked quietly, "did it work?"

"What?" Bob asked, lifting his head.

Gerard looked worried. "I mean, did he – is he upset?"

Bob laughed quietly and ducked his head to lean against Gerard's shoulder. He closed his eyes and concentrated on Mikey, on the feelings of…everything. Confusion, affection, the satisfaction of the best jerk-off he'd had in a _long_ time, and he listened to the floorboards creak as Mikey came out of his room and headed towards the basement stairs. "He's okay," he said pulling back and settling against the pillows, which wasn't really an answer to anything, but Gerard relaxed against him, and didn't make any move to make Bob go back to his air mattress.

Gerard pressed his face to Bob's neck and closed his eyes, and when Mikey appeared in the darkness beside the bed, he looked down at them for a few moments, Bob looking back, holding each other's gaze steadily.

"Hey," Bob whispered, and the corner of Mikey's mouth curled up into a little smile, like that was what he had been waiting for.

"Hey," he said, and fit himself into the space between Bob and the edge of the bed, on top of the covers, but close enough that Bob fell asleep to the comforting feeling of Mikey breathing beside him.  
______________

The day Mikey finished the pills he had gotten overseas, he and Bob turned to each other over lunch, and realized that they were the only ones left in their own heads.

They went so quiet that Gerard started poking Mikey in his side, demanding what was wrong.

"It's okay, Gee," Mikey finally said, swatting his hands away. "It's…everything's okay," and he sounded kind of dazed at the thought.

Gerard looked from him to Bob, then back again, and blinked. "It's…?" he hedged, and Bob nodded.

"I think it's over."

He looked at Mikey, feeling something tighten in his chest, and they made it through the rest of lunch in relative silence. After, when Gerard had disappeared downstairs, looking faintly worried, Mikey looked at Bob over the dishes he was rinsing in the sink, and he said, "I think I miss you."

The emotion Bob felt crash over him was entirely his own, but it still caught him by surprise. "You don't have to, Mikeyway," he said, and reached out to pull Mikey towards him, holding onto him in a way that he no longer needed to, but that calmed him anyway. "I'm not going anywhere."


End file.
